live 3 hopes

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jul 04, 2003 12:46 am

where do mp3s come into play with live performance??? I use live to perform with real keyboard guitars, basses, and drum triggers, and Reason too, and can't seem to understand what mp3s have to do with anything live????

Alex Reynolds · Post by **Alex Reynolds** » Fri Jul 04, 2003 1:25 am

Nearly everyone steals MP3 files (except for me).

Imagine being able to take music files from the 'net and use them directly as a source for samples within Live.

MP3s also take up much less disk space, which would be nice from a storage library point of view and also in that Live reads a sample file over and over and again from the hard drive. A smaller file would mean less battery usage, less time required for Live to analyze the file, etc.

Sound quality for live performances is sometimes less of a concern for the laptop electronic musician. So MP3 quality is probably more than adequate.

While we're at it, why not use AAC or other more efficient codecs?

There are questions with respect to CPU load -- in having to decode the file repeatedly -- and to disk I/O.

Again, what would probably help Live as a major, basic feature -- beyond MIDI, etc. -- is memory caching of decoded sound, instead of constantly pulling and processing data from the hard drive.

Hard drive access is costly -- especially on a laptop.

-Alex

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jul 04, 2003 2:29 am

It's slow enough on the Mac as it is without having to decode multiple mp3's on the fly pre-buffered or not!!

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jul 04, 2003 2:33 am

Oh, and I got a lead for my lappie that let's me hook a cheap 7200rpm drive to my lappie. Stuck it in a caddie with an external power supply and it came to less than a replacement internal drive.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jul 04, 2003 5:06 am

i know this will piss some people off, but i like to create my music,not steal it off the net then pass it off as my own in a live performance. thus all of the live, real instruments I use, and I only create clips for my performances on the spot--no prerecorded material of my own or of anyone elses. I respect and appreciate the art of dj-ing, and can see how powerful live must be to djs, and i like dj music. All that said, with my musician background, and because i've gone to see hundreds of shows of live bands (two favorite--the new deal and sound tribe sector 9), I really want to see real people playing real instruments, so i try to carry this over to my performances with Live, where i build up songs from one bass line or one keyboard part, then keep adding layers as i record more clips. I've seen some laptop performers with minimal or no other gear who may as well be checking email for all i'm concerned as an audience member. The audience is important, and if it looks like you are surfing the web on stage because all you use is prerecorded stuff, how are they to even know if anything is live, or if your just playing a studio creation for them. Be true to yourself--make your own music and connect with audiences on a real physical acoustical level with a real instrument--it makes a world of difference. Anyone can watch somebody at work or school sit behind a computer, when i go to see music i want to see what i hear, i want to watch you play that beat, play that bassline. If all i see are mouse clicks, i don't know what those correlate to, and you haven't really connected with me or anyone else in the audience. and if you use samples at least make sure they are somewhat legal and good at least.

Ryan

ryan

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jul 04, 2003 10:31 am

ditto

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jul 04, 2003 3:30 pm

I think the mp3 support question was for DJ use of Live.

this is where you may need heavy compression, to store a LOT of audio on a drive.

Cherio
Keith
SongCarver

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 2:44 pm

And a heavy cpu to uncompress them on the fly while everything else is going on without glitching.

ryansupak · Post by **ryansupak** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 4:01 pm

with regards to mp3 support --

as far back as late 2001 people from ableton had told me that mp3 support was planned...just taking awhile to implement it properly i guess.

once again though, i'd rather live just remain a super-simple tool that works extremely well and reliably -- ergo i'm willing to wait for mp3 support for as long as it takes to do it right.

but, i think ram caching would indeed help.

rs

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 5:41 pm

Two points re mp3 usage within live. The first is that mp3's are frame-based, encode a wav/aiff to mp3 and then do the reverse. They won't be the same size it's the nature of the compression although there are workarounds it's a potential hazard in something such as live.

Secondly, they would have to be 'cached' whatever way something has to be uncompressed before it can be treated as an audio stream obviously. No matter how large this buffer is the cpu will still be in the background uncompressing and refilling it at a constant rate. Compress a file to mp3 in a standalone app, it takes a little time. Pre-buffering mp3 clips in ram with Live would be an option but Live works on a streaming model from disk at present and that's part of it's beauty as huge audio streams can be handled without large amounts of ram. So, to do the same with mp3 it would need buffering (no big deal) and a garuanteed amount of cpu for decoding on the fly, buffered or not it still has to do it, which of course takes the cpu away from other tasks such as plugins.

I use Live in a "live" situation. That is, I trigger and record clips live. I suppose using mp3's could always be an option to be used or not by choice but given mp3 decoding in realtime is not a trivial task (a different thing from doing it in a standalone app where it has all the time in the world and basically belts it out as fast as the cpu will allow usually) I'd hate this idea to infringe on how Live works now. Ie, LIVE!

Call me old-fashioned but throwing together a ton of pre-recorded samples, throwing a few fx on, wiggling a few faders about does not constitute a live experience to me. It gets asses and tits moving to da beats sure but as far as it being a "LIVE" performance I, and a few others on here it seems, come from a different angle.

If anything got in the way of using Live in a realtime performance using remote controllers and being able to record and trigger the instruments I am playing (not what was done last week in my bedroom) what I am doing while performing it would be the end for me personally.

Creating music in software such as this is one thing. Taking those ideas on the road and presenting them as a performance is a whole different ball-game and people generally want to see some interaction with the "instrument". Music technology has come a long way in the 30 or so years I have been using it but the performance side, imo, is seriously lacking generally. A guy clicking on a mouse with a backscreen projection to make things more interesting just doesn't do it for the majority of audiences. Unless they are out to shake their asses and wiggle those boobies, which is fair enough!

Anyway, there are MUCH more important and interesting things (for musician and audience) that need to be attended to before things such as mp3's get implemented. Want huge banks of audio files to tinker with onstage? Buy a large hard disk!! Jeez, an 80GB drive doesn't cost the earth these days!!

Live started out with an interesting slant on things a few years back. Not going the traditional sequencer route. And here we are, bit by bit, suggesting all of the things that every other cat and his dog has in THEIR software ignoring the very premise of what I thought this was supposed to be all about. LIVE music making!

People want MIDI in Live. Okay, how about this... I use MIDI with Live using a multi I/O soundcard (A Mixtreme btw). I play virtual instruments into clips, yah know LIVE, and use those within pieces during performance. Why sit prepearing, arranging all those clips beforehand when you can go out, play, get paid and when you get home you have just built your library of clips/recordings up at the gig!!??

Watching someone trigger a ton of pre-recorded "trax", clicking a mouse, throwing a few faders and "mixin" is about as interesting to watch as my next door neighbour oputting her washing out. Do it Live!!! It's great!! You make mistakes n shit which makes it, ummm, LIVE!!!!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

dirtystudios · Post by **dirtystudios** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 7:42 pm

personaly, i've no need for mp3 support, but i would like to see an "export as mp3" function when rendering a file to disk.

i really hope that there are never any midi features added to live, save possible controller improvments. live rocks because it's all audio based, yet incredibly flexible. i'm sure there are plenty of people who love their midi piano rolls and i'm sure i'll catch hell for this, but i for one am bored to tears with midi sequencing. i find that the best stuff i've written has used little to no midi with everything else being based on the manipulation of audio files. part of the reason that live is unique is the fact that it only deals with audio, and i don't believe for a second that live won't last more than a few years without midi, like someone said earlier. in fact, i think that electronic music is moving away from being centered around midi, and we are seeing the audio-only approach gaining popularity when it comes to new and inovative music.

for me, live is leading the way when it comes to the future of software and computer music performance and to add midi sequencing would be a step in the wrong direction.

it also seems to me, after reading about the rumors of a live beta this week end in another post, that with the possible support of sdII and direct-connect, that ableton has no intention of adding midi features. instead, if these rumors are true, it would seem that they are trying to make live play nice with all of the midi sequencers out there, so that live can stay audio-only. live already suports rewire (yeah yeah osx, they're working on it) so it plays well with reason, cubase and logic. now, if they support direct-connect, they will be supporting pro tools and dp, which doesn't leave much else out there. i'd be suprised if they went through the trouble of supporting all these interfaces and protocols just to turn around and make them irrelevent by adding midi support.

so, i think live will prolly stay audio-only, and let everyone else worry about midi.

k

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 8:09 pm

Alex Reynolds wrote: A smaller file would mean less battery usage, less time required for Live to analyze the file, etc.
-Alex

No it wouldn't, it would use more battery life. Unless all uncompressed samples were stored in ram after the first use they would need to be decoded everytime they were required. Try playing MP3's on your laptop continuously and compare it to playing a straight wav/aiff from disk, it takes far more cpuage. Then multiply that by however many tracks/clips may need to be played at any one time You'll find it uses more cycles than most plugins ever do especially if it is to be done in realtime.

Alex Reynolds · Post by **Alex Reynolds** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 8:19 pm

I think disk I/O uses more battery power than MP3 decoding. Whether this is due to CPU/PCI bridge usage or from spinning up the disk seems kind of irrelevant.

Certainly rational people can agree that RAM caching would probably be an improvement over the current setup.

RAM is faster and access cost is lower in CPU cycles and power.

-Alex

Mbazzy · Post by **Mbazzy** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 8:21 pm

Personnally I don't need midi either and if I would need it I can eg do it by using Bidule as vst efx , there have even been posts on this forum by reknown developers that they succeeded in making a vst midi plugin ... and there is an upcoming vst sample stepsequencer ... so plenty of workarounds available I guess that hopefully will keep Ableton focused on audio ...

Render to mp3 isn't a necessity as a program like dbpoweramp does this proficiently with a large range of codecs.

But I can understand the aspirations of people who have invested into hardware gear and midi sequenced it with one of the big names ... and now see what Live does to audio ...

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Jul 05, 2003 9:33 pm

Alex Reynolds wrote:I think disk I/O uses more battery power than MP3 decoding. Whether this is due to CPU/PCI bridge usage or from spinning up the disk seems kind of irrelevant.

Nope. A spinning disk in a laptop will consume far less current than a cpu clocking away like billy-o crunching numbers.

Alex Reynolds wrote:Certainly rational people can agree that RAM caching would probably be an improvement over the current setup.

RAM is faster and access cost is lower in CPU cycles and power.

And someone with some knowledge of the mechanics involved would realise that unless you can store ALL of the decoded samples in ram (which isn't an option if tons of stereo clips are to be used which is why Live uses disk in the first place) then there will be no saving. If part of the file(s) is/are pre-buffered then that gets around potential latency but that buffer(s) needs to be filled as fast as it/they are potentialy streamed and then what has already been decoded has now gone and will need to be decoded next time around, etc.

I'm not arguing that decoding into ram wouldn't be more battery efficient than streaming from hard disk. However your point as stated was nothing to do with that...

Alex Reynolds wrote:MP3s also take up much less disk space, which would be nice from a storage library point of view and also in that Live reads a sample file over and over and again from the hard drive. A smaller file would mean less battery usage, less time required for Live to analyze the file, etc.

Which ain't so.